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All six of us are in the SUV. Hakim and Chief wait in the car. Jasper and Vlad come into the entryway, but Krystiyan’s men won’t let them any further.
Jasper wants to stay with me. In fact, he barely agrees to let me go on without him.
“It’s okay,” I tell him. “I’ve got it covered.”
Alone, I follow Krystiyan’s lieutenant into what I can only describe as a villain’s lair.
It’s a dramatic room painted charcoal gray, with floor-to-ceiling drapes, a roaring fireplace, and an actual Siberian bear rug frozen in a futile roar beneath the legs of a throne-like chair.
The rest of the seating is more conventional. Sabrina sits on a perfectly normal couch, Ilsa on an easy chair. They both look tense and pale.
Krystiyan is the only one comfortable, because he’s the only one foolish enough not to understand what’s happening in this moment.
He thinks he’s in some triumphant position. Four of his men around him, mine out in the hall. Sabrina at his right hand, like a queen taken in conquest. Ilsa her knight, sitting next to her, elbows on her knees, fist under her chin, silent and watchful.
Krystiyan actually grins, lolling in his ridiculous chair. Teeth almost as white and straight as an American, a heavy gold bracelet dangling from one wrist, nails manicured, wearing a $6000 suit. Every inch the king.
I’m in jeans and boots. Same jacket as ever. Same hair. I doubt I’ve changed to Sabrina’s eyes. The differences are buried too deep—a poison spreading below the surface where no one can see.
Sabrina is completely altered. If I believed it were possible, I’d think Krystiyan had been torturing her. I’ve never seen her so drained of light. She’s a fading photograph of what she once was.
And yet there’s still a desperate, fragile beauty I feel compelled to save, like a painting that might be restored, or a ring that could be dug up and cleaned and made to shine again.
“Adrik,” Krystian smirks, “I was wondering when you’d come to see me.”
Without even glancing in his direction, I say: “I’m not here to see you.”
I haven’t taken my eyes off Sabrina for one second since I walked in this room. My stare burns into her, lighting her on fire. I see the color rising up her neck into her cheeks, like a temperature gauge. The longer I stare, the hotter she gets.
I take three long strides toward her. Krystiyan jumps up from his chair, stepping in front of me to intercept.
I put one hand on his shoulder and slice across his throat, opening a gash as thick as a finger with the razor-fine blade of the knife Sabrina gave me.
Whatever Krystiyan intended to say is cut off short, his vocal cords severed along with everything else. There’s nothing but whistling silence as he raises his fingers to his neck, his face blank of anything but surprise.
He sinks forward, landing softly on his knees.
The room is utterly still. Krystiyan’s men haven’t moved an inch. They stare at me impassively. Watching their boss struggle and drown without lifting a finger to help him.
All is silence but the pattering of blood from the tip of my knife to the floor.
I look Sabrina dead in the eye.
“Baby…you are really starting to piss me off.”
Krystian topples over behind me. Sabrina’s wide and startled eyes flutter from his body to his men, still unsmiling, still unmoving. Hardly seeming to register their boss on the ground.
“You’re wondering why they don’t do anything? Let me explain it to you. You see that one behind you there? With the earrings? That’s Denis Radmir, we went to school together in St. Petersburg. The one beside him is Yev Tamila. They know who I am. They know that if they eventhinkabout firing a bullet at me, Jasper will come and hunt him down and cut his throat a month, six months, a year later. And if Jasper doesn’t find him, Vlad will. Or Andrei. Or Hakim. Or even fucking Chief. All these men know that.That’sthe difference between a brother and a hired gun.”
I see the sick paleness that comes over her, realizing that she really didn’t see this coming. Realizing how much she doesn’t know.
Ilsa regards Krystiyan’s body on the floor with no surprise at all. I could never have done the same to Sabrina without Ilsa intervening, because she wouldn’t have left her so unprotected to begin with. She stays right by Sabrina’s side.
Ilsa understands how quickly the balance of power shifted.
Krystiyan has no family, no pull beyond his cash. The loyalty his money bought died the moment I cut his throat.
Ilsa’s shoulders lower like a sigh.
